Originally from Washington, D.C., I am a public relations specialist based in Philadelphia and have had writing featured by NPR, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Fox News, and Philly.com. I have published two novels, which can be found on Amazon. I graduated in 2009 from Dartmouth College with a degree in Russian. Follow me on Twitter @whatsthefracas. E-mail me at readmaura@gmail.com

99% Movement Scorns American Creativity

After Steve Jobs died, people recognized that his worth to society should be defined by his legacy of innovation and not by the material wealth he personally acquired. People were willing to admit, at least in his posthumous case, that entrepreneurs are to be thought of first and foremost as risk-takers and then as “the rich.” That philosophy did not stick for very long. An attitude continues to grow in America that has begun to be reflected in public policy, which heaps disdain on the creative and successful. No matter how many people are behind it, though, even if it’s fully 99% of us, this mentality will never lead to progress and cannot be sustained. To really move forward, we have to reassess what it means to be creative and start respecting again what the best and the brightest do for us.

Part of our devaluation of creativity comes from the fact that typical attempts to make sense of it bring up education. Executive vice president of Human Resources at Merck, Mirian Graddick-Weir, for instance, wrote a blog post for the Harvard Business Review in March on “How to Educate More Creative Problem-Solvers.” Like others, she concludes that American children are not developing into creative people because “we haven’t adequately taught them how to think.” Poor math and science scores are often cited as a bad omen for our future in a global economy. Yet, these are red herrings. Creativity has little to do with the reported sub-par skills of average students and nothing to do with standardized measures of performance.

Creativity is not taught. The impulse has to already be present in a person; it cannot be implanted by a curriculum, even the most comprehensive. Creativity is not a commodity either. It cannot be bought by federal funding or parents paying for private tutors. Creativity is a natural quality—either you can imagine what doesn’t exist or you can’t—that is then nurtured through exploration so it can be used productively to make new things out of nothing.

A creative person can be born into any circumstances and can thrive in any circumstances. He or she can be anyone in society. Michelangelo was the son of a local government official and had the pope himself for a patron, while Solzhenitsyn grew up fatherless and was sent by the state to prison camps. Galileo died under house arrest, Newton died a knight. A quick survey of some of the brightest minds civilization has known shows that there is no uniformity to their life stories. There is no set path to doing great things for the world. That’s why so many people puzzle over the phenomenon and dig into biographies. They are looking for a rubric when there is none.

Without a rubric, and taking into consideration that many we call geniuses suffered with formal schooling, it is not very reasonable to look to collective education as the source of creative thinking. Creativity is an individual gift individually expressed. Success too is unique. Yet people want to impose the universal measurement of dollars and regulate both. Americans are losing appreciation for the extraordinary nature of an innovative mind. That’s why so many are quick to gang up and revile the exceptional few who can both dream big and follow through. It’s a mistake to do this.

There is already a huge barrier to trying something new and different: the threat of failure. Yet, the self-proclaimed 99% continues to make success seem like a worse fate. No one would bother to use their natural abilities to better the lives of others if a super-majority of those others were going to set an agenda against them. Those who signed the 99% Spring letter, though, seem to think that by holding the high-achievers back they are going to move us all forward. This is irrational. They use the words “wealth” and “richest” and will say they’re just after an indolent, politically insidious class of top-earners, but they are assaulting our creative class in the process.

There is more to being creative than ending up financially secure—starving artists abound—but there is a coincidence of creativity and material success that can’t be ignored. A bold mind may invent something in his garage because he has the idea and the aptitude, but for it to matter and for us to benefit, he must make it widely available. That is going to involve economic decisions. Like it or not, it is going to involve money and he is going to make some. If we live in a just world, the bold mind will be rewarded. Why would we want it to be otherwise?

The problem is that we don’t realize that creative people are doing more for us than invent the big things we can see and touch. They are quietly being brave enough to try something new, anonymously making our lives easier and more enjoyable. It’s too subtle for us to notice. We have no clue how vast and interconnected our society is and assume instead that a small fraction, a fraction about the same size as the population of American Jews, has all the money and power and seeks to manipulate and disenfranchise the rest of us.

No one would dare to draw this particular connection, though, because major labor unions and non-profit organizations have not signed a letter about how that 1 to 2% of the population seems to hoard wealth and detract from our larger common purpose. They aren’t singling out a minority that would get them in trouble. Instead they have in their crosshairs the 1% of the population that has done too well for themselves regardless of actual identity.

Creative individuals are rare, which is why their names stand out in history, but they are not so rare that only those who have become famous can be given the label. They are not merely the 1% we can target, but the way we treat the 1% affects the others. Without being geniuses, people everywhere think creatively to solve problems, balance budgets, achieve goals, and change their immediate worlds. They have to be inclined to do it, though. There has to be a good enough reason for them to be willing to take the risk of making an unusual or unorthodox decision.

That’s the point of creativity: to do what hasn’t been done. The incentive for doing it is often simple. Because we have basic human needs that we can’t supply ourselves, we have to turn to a larger market and to do that we have to have the means to participate in exchanges; creativity is a way of obtaining and saving that means. Finding and keeping a living can be the greatest impetus for creative activity.

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You wrote: “After Steve Jobs died, people recognized that his worth to society should be defined by his legacy of innovation and not by the material wealth he personally acquired. People were willing to admit, at least in his posthumous case, that entrepreneurs are to be thought of first and foremost as risk-takers and then as ‘the rich.’”

I have to disagree. Really, what did he do that was so extraordinary? Mr. Jobs did not invent a single thing. Xerox had already built a working, marketable PC, its Alto before Mr. Jobs built his first. Further, Mr. Jobs lifted the whole concept of Graphical User Interface (GUI) from Xerox on his visit to the Palo Alto Research Center. To his credit, Mr. Jobs never claimed otherwise and in fact was quite open about his debt to the truly inventive folks at the Xerox. Had the upper management not been completely “clueless” as to what it possessed in its Palo Alto facility, Xerox would have been the dominant player in the personal computer market. Mr. Jobs was an excellent packager and marketer but the computer revolution would have occurred with or without him.

More to the point, what did he do for the average American? All of the products that he so successfully marketed are very nice but, like all other what does that mean for the country as a whole. Like so many other of “the rich”, he moved untold thousands of jobs out of the United States to overseas operations where wages are lower and profits higher. He and a handful of other people because much wealthier by this move but tens of thousands of ordinary Americans became poorer.

This is the “debt” that the United States owes Mr. Jobs and “the rich”.

I do not believe that Mr. Jobs was a schmuck, he was a talented marketer and developer of products that other people invented. Mr. Jobs was innovative as a marketer and packager of technology but he was not, however, an inventor.

Being innovative is not the same thing as being an inventor. Henry Ford is example of someone who invented nothing but brought together the ideas of others to innovate, in this case the mass produced, low cost automobile. Thomas Edison was an inventor, he designed things that had never existed before.

Beyond the merits of Mr. Jobs as an individual, the broader question is that of the role of “Innovation” and its importance to the American People and economy. In and of itself, innovation does little to improve the competitiveness of the US or the overall prosperity of the American people. The example of this has to be, at least for me, the story of Pr. Yet-Ming Chiang of MIT who invented a revolutionary new lithium-ion battery here in the good old USA. However, the company he started to manufacture while based here in the US, actually makes the batteries in China despite his efforts have them built here in the US. Today thousands of jobs in China are dedicated to the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries “innovated” here in the US.

Innovation in and of itself does nothing for the US economy other than the small circle of people involved in development, licensing, litigating, marketing, and what not. Innovation that produces jobs overseas does not help the workers here in the US.

Incidentally, Mario Mendoza was an excellent ball player, just a mediocre hitter. He was hired by Pittsburgh from Mexico City for his fielding abilities which are quite well regarded. Batting 0.200 while being an outstanding defensive player is not a bad combination to have on ball team.

He was an innovative at marketing, not inventing. Ms. Pennington presented Mr. Jobs as someone like Thomas Edison who actual created new things and transformed the world. Had Mr. Jobs been hit by a bus on his way to the Xerox Palo Alto facility where he would not have discovered the existence of a GUI, the world would be none too different than it is today.

With that said, I think the policy issues are more to the point rather than Mr. Jobs himself.

“Success” seldom follows from creativity and rarely motivates it. The idea that the ’99%,” whoever they are in your mind, want to squelch either success or creativity is utter nonsense. The 99% want to be “successful” too. Not everyone can achieve the same high level of success nor do they deserve too. We all know this. But that doesn’t mean our representatives should construct or acquiesce in winner-take-all economic policies. On the contrary, our representatives are supposed to balance the interests of the few in our society with the interests of the many. Or did you forget . . . we are a constitutional democracy first and foremost? Within it exists a relatively free, free-market system, thanks to the “consent of the governed.”

It’s true that success rarely follows creativity, but I would disagree that success doesn’t motivate it. While success may not motivate creativity itself (I believe there is some existential pleasure in the act of creation alone), it is material success that motivates a person to bring that new idea or object to the rest of humanity. If a person were not guaranteed some fruits for their labors to bring an idea to market (whether in the form of money or esteem), then they would have no incentive to do so, leaving all of us worse off. I believe the author’s fear is that if we eat into the fruits we would bestow on potential creators through redistributive policies, we will see less of the dynamism that has driven the progress of humanity over the last couple of centuries.

Also, it is true that our representatives are supposed to balance the interests of the few against the many, but it is just as easy (perhaps easier) for a majority to tyrannize a minority than it is for a minority to tyrannize a majority. In this case, I would agree with the author that the majority is better served by allowing a creative class the honors we would bestow upon them in exchange for the products they create and distribute that make life easier and more fulfilling.

All that said, it is true that the wealthy and corporations have more potential and fewer barriers to abusing members of the majority. However, a rigid constitutional framework that puts rule of law ahead of any other considerations will guarantee more protection from those abuses than a government that browbeats some corporations and enables others based on political considerations.

Phil, Thanks for spending the time to respond to my comment. I stand by my statement that “success” rarely motivates creativity. I agree that “success” motivates bringing creative works to market. I also agree that creative individuals who publish or sale their work should be adequately rewarded for doing so. This is why we have constitituionally-authorized intellectual property laws.

It is quite a leap from there, however, to argue that the “99%” scorn, creative successful people and seek to undermine their well-deserved rewards, especially since it is the same 99% who are largely responsible for economically rewarding creative individuals by purchasing or licensing their works. The 99% clearly recognize the worth of creative individuals.

The 99% (whoever they are) simply want the opportunity to be rewarded for their worth too. As Mauri Baggiano wrote in a Letter to the Editor for TIME.COM . . .

“The Occupy Wall Street movement by ordinary citizens is largely a symbolic act, with political ramifications. It symbolizes the need for (and demands) a public-interest based economy and the failure of our government to satisfy that need. The question is, will our representatives change course and promote the general welfare in our economic policies or continue to behave as absentee landlords of their economic domain — interstate and international commerce?

In a nation that rewards the accumulation of wealth from wealth and not from labor the rich will continue to get richer and the poor, poorer. The poor will also get angrier as more jobs and capital are sent overseas, making their situations worse. And who could blame them? They live in a democracy, based on representative government. But when their representatives do nothing to protect their interests they will, of course, feel alienated and powerless, unless they take power into their own hands, just the way the first American revolutionaries did.

I am afraid that as the gap between rich and poor continues to grow so too will civil unrest because our representatives are failing us. Our national economy must return to a public-interest based economy, for the good of country because what is good for our people is good for our country. The two cannot be separated. But our people are separated from our government. They have the power to elect their representatives but, in return, get little or no representation for their efforts. Their political will is not carried forth into laws promoting their economic interests above powerful minority, special interests.

Until the concept of a utilitarian economy takes root in Congress’s legislative agenda the Occupy Wall Street movement will not go away and will gain momentum with an even broader spectrum of Americans. If nothing is done, the endgame will take us back to where this country started — to a bloody struggle for a fair voice and representation in government. This country is on the wrong track. If something isn’t done soon for average Americans, how long will it be before the entire train derails?”